23. It was said unto the apostles of the Lord, Be ye wise as serpents, and harmless as doves15    Matt. x. 16.. Christ therefore wished there to be in us the nature of different creatures: but in such a sort that the harmlessness of the dove might temper the serpent’s wisdom, and the wisdom of the serpent might instruct the harmlessness of the dove, and that so wisdom might be made harmless and harmlessness wise. This precept has been observed in the exposition of this creed. For the former sentence of which we have spoken guarded against the teaching of a unity of person under the cloak of an essential likeness, and against the denial of the Son’s birth as the result of an identity of nature, lest we should understand God to be a single monad because one Person does not differ in kind from the other. In the next sentence, by harmless and apostolic wisdom we have again taken refuge in that wisdom of the serpent to which we are bidden to be conformed no less than to the harmlessness of the dove, lest perchance through a repudiation of the unity of persons on the ground that the Father is one Person and the Son another, a preaching of the dissimilarity of their natures should again take us unawares, and lest on the ground that He who sent and He who was sent are two Persons (for the Sent and the Sender cannot be one Person) they should be considered to have divided and dissimilar natures, though He who is born and He who begets Him cannot be of a different essence. So we preserve in Father and in Son the likeness of an identical nature through an essential birth: yet the similarity of nature does not injure personality by making the Sent and the Sender to be but one. Nor do we do away with the similarity of nature by admitting distinct personal qualities, for it is impossible that the one God should be called Son and Father to Himself. So then the truth as to the birth supports the similarity of essence and the similarity of essence does not undermine the personal reality of the birth. Nor again does a profession of belief in the Begetter and the Begotten exclude a similarity of essence; for while the Begetter and the Begotten cannot be one Person, He who is born and He who begets cannot be of a different nature.

X. “And if any one admits that God became Father of the Only-begotten Son at any point in time and not that the Only-begotten Son came into existence without passion beyond all times and beyond all human calculation: for contravening the teaching of the Gospel which scorned any interval of times between the being of the Father and the Son and faithfully has instructed us that In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God16    John i. 1., let him be anathema.”

0498A 23. Quam caute duae haereses contra Dei filium peremptae.---Dictum ad Apostolos Domini est: Estote prudentes ut sunt serpentes, et simplices ut columbae (Matth., X, 16). Per quod dissidentium a se animantium inesse nobis voluit naturam: sed ita, ut serpentinam prudentiam columbae simplicitas temperaret, et simplicitatem columbae prudentia serpentis instrueret; fieretque et simplex sapientia, et sapiens simplicitas: quod praeceptum in hujus fidei expositione servatum est. Namque cum superior, de qua locuti sumus, sententia id cavisset, ne, per similitudinem essentiae, personalis unio praedicaretur; neque ut naturae indifferentia perimeret Filii nativitatem; et unus ac solitarius nobis esset in sensu, quia alter ab altero non differret in genere: sed consequenti 0498B sententia illi prudentiae serpentis, cui configurari cum columbae simplicitate praecipimur, per simplicem atque apostolicam prudentiam rursum occursum est; ne forte per id, quod personalis unio non reciperetur, quia alius sit Pater, alius et Filius, praedicatio iterum dissimilis naturae possit obrepere: ne cum alius est qui miserit, et alius est qui missus est (quia non unus est missus et mittens), discretae ac dissimilis naturae existimarentur esse missus et mittens, cum diversae essentiae esse non possint natus et gignens. Retinetur itaque in Patre et Filio naturae indifferentis similitudo per essentiae nativitatem: non tamen damnum personae affert, ut unus sit missus et mittens, similitudo naturae. Neque rursum in personae proprietate, cum non possit ipse 0498C sibi unus et filius et Pater dici, aufertur similitudo naturae. Atque ita et nativitatis veritas ad similitudinem proficit essentiae, et similitudo essentiae non amittit nativitatis personalem veritatem. Neque rursum professio gignentis et geniti 475 similitudinem excludit essentiae; quia cum gignens et genitus unus esse non possit, non tamen diversae naturae sint natus et generans.

X. «Et si quis in aliquo tempore patrem Deum unigeniti filii intelligat, et non super tempora et super omnem humanam aestimationem unigenitum filium sine passione exstitisse: quasi praetergrediens evangelicam praedicationem, quae temporum quidem intercapedinem de Patre et Filio adspernata 0499A est, fideliter autem nos docuit, quod in principio erat Verbum, et Verbum erat apud Deum, et Deus erat Verbum (Joan., I, 1): anathema sit.»